Elections 2018

Candidate Biographies and Statements

Vice Chair/Chair-elect

Greg Bailey

Greg Bailey is the University Archivist and Clements Curator at Texas A&M University. He has served in these capacities since January 2014. As University Archivist he is responsible for the day-to-day operations of the university archives and related collections and serves as the primary spokesperson for Texas A&M history on behalf of the Libraries. As Clements Curator he is responsible for the papers of two term Governor William P. Clements. Prior to coming to Texas A&M, Mr. Bailey was the University Archivist and Records Manager at Stephen F. Austin State University for three years. He received his BA in History with minors in Geography and Political Science from Eastern Illinois University and holds an MLS from Indiana University with a Specialization in Archives and Records Management. Mr. Bailey currently is serving on the College and University Archives Section Steering Committee and has served as a mentor in the SAA Mentoring Program Mr. Bailey currently is serving on the College and University Archives Section Steering Committee and has served as a mentor in the SAA Mentoring Program the last three years. In September 2017 he was appointed to the Mentoring Program Subcommittee.  Mr. Bailey also serves as the Vice-Chair of the Brazos County Historical Commission, Vice-Chair of the Brazos County World War I Centennial Committee, and as Lead Contact in the Bryan/College Station area for the Texas World War I Centennial Committee.

Candidate Statement

Howdy! (As we say here in Aggieland) I am excited about the opportunity to serve as the Vice-Chair/Chair-Elect of the College and University Archives Section Steering Committee. Over the last year I have enjoyed my time on the C&U Section Steering Committee and it has made me want to continue to work in this community, and to learn about the challenges facing others at academic institutions around the United States and how we can help them. I have had to opportunity to work as a University Archivist for six and half years at two universities in my career. These positions have given me experiences that I would like to share with the college and university archives community. I also would love to have the opportunity to learn from this community as well. I have served as a mentor in the SAA Mentoring Program, worked the Career Center at the SAA Annual Meeting, am hoping to further my engagement and participation in SAA and my growth as an archivist through this opportunity.


Benn Joseph

Benn Joseph joined Northwestern University in 2009 and currently serves as Head of Archival Processing, a unit which provides arrangement, description, and collection management services for both paper-based and born-digital collection materials in Special Collections and University Archives, as well as the Music Library, Transportation Library, and the Herskovits Library of African Studies. He also acts as the institutional administrator for ArchivesSpace on campus. Prior to Northwestern he held positions at Illinois Institute of Technology as Head of Special Collections & University Archives, and project archivist positions at Chicago History Museum and Benedictine University. Benn received his MSLS degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and is a member of the 2013 Archives Leadership Institute cohort.

Candidate statement

Having worked in archives at small and large institutions, both public and private, I would bring a variety of experiences to this position that I hope would represent the constituency of the College & University Archives section. My current position, along with Northwestern’s Archival Processing unit, was created as part of a recent library-wide administrative reorganization. In this unique role, I have worked to streamline processing operations and find opportunities for collaboration across all our campus repositories, and as a result have become very interested in organizational change. This is something that touches us all at academic institutions, and as Vice Chair/Chair-Elect I would be interested in exploring how academic archives can approach organizational change, how they fit structurally and culturally in the greater academic institution, and how project management workflows could be introduced into our daily routines. I’m very interested in this last point, both for processing and in the reading room, and the ways in which this sort of documentation can formalize our efforts with staff, students, volunteers, and researchers. As Vice Chair/Chair-Elect, I would also strive to continue C&U efforts to connect our conversations to SAA’s current Goals and Strategies, where appropriate.


 

Steering Committee members

April Anderson

April Karlene Anderson is the university archivist for Illinois State University. Anderson earned master’s degrees in library and information science from Florida State University and in history from the University of Central Florida. She is a certified archivist through the Academy of Certified Archivists and holds a Digital Archives Specialist Certificate through the Society of American Archivists. Anderson has also worked as an archives consultant partnering with a number of academic institutions and companies to help set up their archives programs.

Candidate Statement

A university archive is where I first learned that I wanted to be an archivist.  I was a second career archivist, and though I initially didn’t see myself working long-term at a university repository, my time spent as a university archivist has shown me that academic archives are my home.  Not only does my work help student researchers and administrators alike, I’ve been able to come full circle and give those ‘touching history’ experiences to future archivists.

I would like to expand my role beyond the university and work with fellow college and university archivists in not only navigating a changing digital archives landscape but in teaching our next generation archivists and advocating our work on our campuses.  Our specialized area of archives makes us a unique bunch – we are the cheerleaders of our institution, we are the advocates for our collections, and we are teachers of history and archives. With this in mind, I hope you will consider me for a steering committee role with the College and University Archives section of SAA.

 


 

Elvia Arroyo-Ramirez

Elvia is the Assistant University Archivist at the University of California, Irvine where she is responsible for providing physical and intellectual access to university archives, faculty papers, and student organization records. She earned her Master’s in Library and Information Science with specialization in Archives, Preservation, and Records Management from the University of Pittsburgh in 2011. She’s previously worked at Princeton University as Processing Archivist for Latin American Collections and as Project Archivist for the Center for the Study of Political Graphics (CSPG). She served on the 2017-2018 SAA Nominating Committee and is a contributing member of Project STAND. She co-editor of an coming issue on “Radical Empathy in Archival Practice” in the Journal of Critical Library and Information Studies (JCLIS).

Candidate Statement

I’ve recently made the transition from working with manuscript collections and personal papers to university archives and while the functions and goals of what we do as archivists are the same, working with university archives affords archivists the opportunity to work closely with students, faculty, and administrative staff. This is exciting to me, particularly since I am working at an officially designated Hispanic-serving (HSI) and an Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-serving institution (AANAPISI). More than half of our graduating seniors identify as a first-generation college students. I recognize that my institutional context is not the majority reality for college and university demographics, but I expect that college and university archivists will need to be increasingly responsive to the changing demographics across campuses in coming years. How does this impact our work in university archives? How can archival practices be more inclusive and thoughtful about the first gen student experience? If elected as a Steering Committee member, I would be interested in collaborating with my professional colleagues in the College & University Archives Section to explore ideas for outreach and projects to engage students and document the student experience. Even though I am new to this community, I hope to join in the ongoing conversations and help spark new ones about current issues and emerging trends in college and university archives.

 


 

Elizabeth Beckman

Liz Beckman has been the Manuscripts and Archives Librarian at George Mason University's Special Collections Research Center since December 2016. She started at George Mason as the Processing Coordinator in Special Collections in November 2014. Prior to this, she held internships at a variety of organizations, including the American Association of University Women, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, and the United Way of Allegheny County in Pittsburgh. Liz earned her BA in history from Kenyon College and her MLIS from the University of Pittsburgh. 

Candidate Statement

Archivists in college and university settings play a number of roles and serve a wide array of researchers, but we are unique in introducing students to unpublished material at a formative time in their educational lives. I am particularly interested in and passionate about documenting student groups, and I hope to increase student, faculty, and community investment in archival work. I believe that we need to break down the visible and invisible barriers that may prevent our users from taking advantage of what is available to them. As a member of the College and University Archives Section Steering Committee, I hope to encourage discussion from a wide range of institutional perspectives so that we can learn from each other and implement strategies to make archives an indispensable part of higher education.

 


Randall Bowman

I have been an Archivist at Elon University since 2015. I create and maintain intellectual access to our collections, as well as contribute to the outreach, marketing, promotion, and use of the materials in our Archives and Special Collections Department. Prior to working in the archives, I was an instruction librarian at Elon and at Gardner-Webb University. I received a MLIS from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in 1997, and did additional coursework in archival studies at UNCG in 2008.  I also have a Bachelor of Arts degree in history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

I have recently served on the Nominating Committee for SNCA, and am Past Chair of the College and University Section of NCLA. From 2013-2015 I was a member of NCLA’s Executive Board, as well as a member of the planning committee for NCLA’s 61st Biennial Conference. I participated in NCLA’s Leadership Institute in 2012. I have also served on the Communications Committee of the Instruction Section of the Association of College and Research Libraries (2005-2006), and was president of the LIS Alumni Association of UNC-Greensboro from 2010-2012.

Candidate statement

As a new member of the archival profession, I am excited about the possibility of becoming further engaged in the archival community, as well as serving my fellow archivists through SAA. Although I have only been an archivist for a relatively short time, I have over twenty years’ professional experience as an academic librarian.  I have brought this experience and enthusiasm to my new position, and I will be an effective member of the Steering Committee. In this capacity I would like to serve the members of the College and University Section. Thank you for your consideration!

 


Zach Brodt

Zach has been the University Archivist at the University of Pittsburgh since 2015. Prior to this position, he was the University Records Manager (2010-2015) and a project archivist (2009-2010), both at Pitt. Zach holds an MLIS, specializing in Archives and Records Management, (2008) and a BA in History and Classics (2007) from the University of Pittsburgh. He has been a member of SAA since 2007 and presented at the 2015 annual meeting. He is the recipient of the 2016 Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference’s Arline Custer Memorial Award for his article “Strike Out: A Pirates Pitcher at the Battle of Homestead” and was a member of their Spring 2016 local arrangements committee.

Candidate statement

Having spent my entire career at a university archive, I am well aware of the importance they play in preserving institutional memory, teaching students the value of archival research, and providing valuable work experience to future archivists. As a former undergraduate and graduate student employee at my alma mater’s archive, I can attest to how those experiences can affect a student’s career choices. I look forward to the opportunity to work with colleagues in addressing some of our shared challenges and opportunities, including teaching with primary sources, best practices for student assistants, documenting the student experience on campus, and more.

 


 

Lae'l Hughes-Watkins


Hughes-Watkins is responsible for managing the University Archives program at Kent State, which includes the May 4 Collection. Some of her principal duties involve acquiring and appraising University Archives records, coordinating the process and preservation of University archival material in all formats, digitization, co-¬administering with the University’s General Counsel, the records retention program, providing reference and research assistance, and instructional programming about the University Archives.  Her research areas focus on outreach to marginalized communities, documenting student activism within disenfranchised populations, and utilizing narratives of oppressed voices within the curricula of post-secondary education spaces. Her most recent publication is “Moving Toward a Reparative Archive: A Roadmap for a Holistic Approach to Disrupting Homogenous Histories in Academic Repositories and Creating Inclusive Spaces for Marginalized Voices” in the Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies. She is the Founder of Project STAND, a national initiative to create a centralized digital space where academic institutions can provide researchers access to historical and archival documentation on the development and on-going occurrences of student dissent. Project STAND focuses on digital and analog primary sources that document the activities of student groups that represent the concerns of historically marginalized communities (e.g., African American, Chicano/ LGBTQ, religious minorities, disabled, etc. Hughes-Watkins is also an 2018 ARL Leadership and Career Development Fellow and the recent recipient of the Merit Award for Society of Ohio Archivists for Project STAND.

Candidate statement

During my first year at Kent State University, it became my primary objective to bring in voices from the margins and actively acquire collections that reflect the broad and diverse experiences of Kent State’s University’s student life, specifically the experiences of marginalized identities. Archivists in colleges and universities are positioned in unique roles to engage in outreach with current students and alumni. The task of archiving current and past narratives of African American, Latinx, LGBTQIA, differently abled, indigenous populations, Native Americans, and all other historically underrepresented communities that remain invisible are rife with challenges that are broad and varies across academic institutions. While the duties of archivists at colleges and universities include a litany of responsibilities, like appraisal, accessioning, outreach, processing, digitization, curation and exhibits, our north star must be creating spaces of inclusivity through our work. As a member of the College and University Archives Section Steering Committee, I hope to stimulate discourse around these ideas and learn from the successful practices implemented by colleagues at other academic institutions.


 

Jessica Maddox

Jessica Maddox is the Special Collections and University Archives Accessioning Archivist at the University of Nevada, Reno Libraries. Jessica is responsible for accessioning all incoming manuscript and archival materials, and processing small collections. She holds a Masters in Library and Information Science from San Jose State University and a Bachelor of Arts in History from the University Of Nevada, Reno.

Candidate statement

I am excited to have the opportunity to serve as a committee member for SAA’s College and University Archives Section. Having worked in a Special Collections and University Archive since 2007, I have learned the value of University Archives and the importance of advocating for it. One of the most pertinent and persistent questions to me is how do we preserve the ephemeral nature of student organizations and activities on campus? In light of recent events on campuses across the nations, from protests to cultural engagement, how we work to ensure the activities of the student body are available for future generations to use is especially important. Serving on this committee would give me the opportunity to become more involved with individuals who share the same concerns as I do. I also hope other might benefit from my experience working with the University community at UNR.

 

 


Karen Trivette

Professor Karen Jamison Trivette is the current Head of Special Collections and College Archives (SPARC) in the Gladys Marcus Library at the Fashion Institute of Technology, a part of the State University of New York (SUNY); she has held this position since 2008 and is its first incumbent. She holds a Master of Library Science degree with a concentration in Archives and Records Management from the University at Albany (New York) and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Art History from UNC-Chapel Hill (North Carolina). She has worked primarily in art libraries and art archives (including the Albany Institute of History and Art; the Clark Art Institute Library; and the Museum of Modern Art Archives) except for an over three-year post at the New York State Archives where she primarily advised practitioners on archives and records management matters. She edited the publication Fashion Plates: 150 Years of Style (2015), which was sourced completely from SPARC holdings, and has presented at many conferences, both national and international in scope. She recently wrote the forthcoming article for Art Libraries Journal entitled, "Historical Holdings and New Dimensions: The Special Collections and College Archives at the Fashion Institute of Technology-State University of New York" and co-authored a chapter on the life of pioneering fashion forecaster Tobé Coller Davis. In 2013, she was awarded the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Librarianship and in 2016, she was elected Vice President/President-Elect of the Archivists Round Table of Metropolitan New York, Inc. (ART); her term as President began June 2017 and will end June 2018. She will continue serving ART as its Past-President, June 2018-June 2019. In addition, Trivette will serve ART as its representative on the Regional Archivists Association Consortium, a term that will last from 2018-2020. She currently serves SAA on the editorial board of its journal, American Archivist.

Candidate statement

I am delighted to run for a position on the Steering Committee of SAA's College and University Archives (C&UA) section. Beta Phi Mu (BPM), the International Library and Information Studies Honor Society, has the following motto: Aliis inserviendo consumor, meaning, “Consumed in the service of others.” As a member of BPM, I hold this not only as my chosen motto but also as my chosen practice. Over the last fifteen (15) years in the field, I have served many different constituencies in many different settings; none has given me greater pleasure than serving my own colleagues in the archives field. If elected, I will serve the committee and its section with enthusiasm, curiosity, and diligence while thinking critically and creatively to get the good work of the C&UA section done. I would be honored to serve my C&UA section colleagues as a Steering Committee member and very much appreciate your vote!


Bryan Whitledge

Bryan Whitledge is the Archivist for University Digital Records at Central Michigan University, where he has worked since 2011. During his time at the Clarke Historical Library, he has worked with reference, digitizing and reformatting, and digital preservation. He holds a Bachelor's degree in political science and a Masters of Library and Information Science from the University of Illinois (2011), where he worked in the University Archives in a variety of capacities from 2006 to 2011. For the past four years, he has served on the leadership of the SAA Security Section and in 2016 he worked with the leadership team to establish the Archives Security blog, offering information and resources about crimes against archives and cultural heritage objects.

Candidate statement

I welcome the opportunity to serve as a member of the Steering Committee of the College and University Archives Section. I have been fortunate to spend the entirety of my career in higher education archives and I have benefited greatly from the skills and knowledge passed onto me by mentors and colleagues in the field. Like any good archivist, I intend to keep sharing what I have learned with others and I believe that the Steering Committee offers someone like me an excellent opportunity to serve. At its heart, archives is about connecting researchers with resources, and I believe that the College and University Archive Section and the Academic Archivist blog are excellent venues for connecting college and university archivists to information of relevance to them. I look forward to this chance to work with a great team of engaged archivists to continue pushing the discipline further in the right direction and contributing to this wonderful community of knowledge within the Section and within SAA.